The SPE had this year's Annual Technical Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio which was a surprisingly pretty city. On the Kentucky border, you land in the rolling green hills and come over the Ohio river into a surprisingly nice town. Following the river either way takes you out to the flatter land I think of as Ohio.

My highlight for the seminar was the Emerging Technology Forum, which dealt with carbon nano-tubes. These carbon structures of 10-60 nm diameter are the source of much research and more hype, and the forum was a great way to get a well rounded overview. They started with sessions that told you what these things were and how they were made and worked up from there until day 2, where you were listening to reports of current research. Amazing things with both high modulus and high damping but not cheap. The good stuff, single walled tubes, costs as much as 10,000 USD/pound and requires a 1:1 catalyst to product ratio.  So those space elevators are a good ways off.

I also attended a session on the Tg in honor of Prof. Greg McKenna receiving the founder's award. It was a graduate class in the glass transition. Wunpen presented some of our work on epoxies in another session and I got to present the PerkinElmer Student Paper Award for the Composite Division. All in all a good week. Especially as the local Cantonese joint and the fish place near the hotel were both exceptionally good.